his face
showing how pleased he felt. "And you were lucky, as Steve here just
said, to fall in with such a fine man as Mr. Coombs, at the time you
started your fur farm. I suppose it was the interest he took in it that
made him hand over this cabin, when he learned that his plans for
staying here could never be carried out."

"Why, yes, mostly that," agreed Obed, turning a little red. "P'raps I
ought to tell yuh that I chanced to do Mr. Coombs a little favor when we
first met. Yuh see, I happened to come on him in the woods. He'd started
out to find a certain kind o' sapling that he wanted right bad to use;
and not bein' used to findin' his way around, he jest naturally got
lost. But that wasn't the wust o' it. In using his ax to chop down a
sapling he kim across, what did he do but cut his foot, and it was
bleeding like fun when I ketched his shouts, and kim up. Course, I soon
fixed that foot, and since he was only a little dried-up speck o' a man
I managed to tote him on my back most ways home here. He chose to think
I'd done him a _great_ favor, and after that he was always sayin' he
meant to repay me some day. Well, he certainly did when he turns over
this here neat contraption at a price that was dirt cheap, and which I'd
be ashamed to mention to yuh. That's how it come I got this cabin."

How simple the explanation was after all, and how Bandy-legs must feel
his cheeks burn with shame at the thought of having suspected this same
Obed of trying to deceive them. Max could easily picture the ex-sea
captain seated in that capacious fireside chair with the tufted cushion,
and perhaps smoking his long-stemmed pipe with the air of a man who
believed he had found what he had long sought, peace and comfort
combined, only to have a summons come that he dared not disobey.

"Make yourselves to hum," said Obed, cheerily. "Here, drop the packs
over in this corner. If later on so be yuh want to git anything out o'
the same it'll be easy done. And seein' as I've got dinner started, I
guess we wont take a turn around the farm till it's been stowed away."

Although, of course, all of the boys were eager to see what a fur farm
looked like, where those wonderful black foxes that brought such, a big
price in the London markets were being bred in captivity, none of them
objected to sitting down and taking a rest. Bandy-legs and Steve in
particular made a bolt for the big chair, though the latter was too
quick for his competitor, and